Unconscious Karen Behavior Quotes

These two factors—self-contempt and anxiety—are largely responsible for the repression of sadistic impulses. The thoroughness and depth of repression vary. Often the destructive impulses are merely kept from awareness. By and large it is astonishing how much sadistic behavior can be lived out without the individual's knowing it. He is conscious only of occasional desires to mistreat a weaker person, of being excited when he reads about sadistic acts, or of having some obviously sadistic fantasies. But these sporadic glimpses remain isolated. The bulk of what he does to others in his daily behavior is for the most part unconscious. His numbness of feeling for himself and others is one factor that blurs the issue; until this is dispelled he cannot emotionally experience what he does. Besides, the justifications brought to bear to conceal the sadistic trends are often clever enough to deceive not only the sadistic person himself but even those affected by them.

Perhaps it was the pass that most white men got for committing crimes and the uneasiness it had to cause, within themselves and the larger community, that led government officials to focus so intensely on black crime. Also, I believe a widespread fear of blacks by whites, produced by their unpunished crimes against them, also served to increase whites’ focus on “black criminality.” We understand better today how unconscious or unaddressed perceptions of individuals and groups can be projected onto others in harmful ways. I found only one man, a fearless Columbus newspaper editor named Julian Harris, who once, in the 1920s, used this idea to explain KKK behavior. While we may have a stronger grasp on this phenomenon, we still haven’t remedied it, as evidenced by our mass incarceration of African Americans entirely out of proportion to their population. The Mountain Hill district had long been a breeding ground for white outlaws, some of whom had attained the stature of heroes